Two #3
My mouth went dry with terror. The skull peered down at us, hollow eye sockets tracking our movements as we hovered in front of it.
Its bottom jaw gaped, pinchers extending like the mandibles of some ungodly insect.
Hundreds of legs scraped over the stones, attached to the long, segmented body of a massive centipede.
It towered over us, a blasphemous abomination, its front six legs gleaming in the sun like scythes. Raithe went rigid behind me.
“Ratuk!” I gasped. “Down!”
One of those front legs streaked out like an arrow. I felt the wind from its passing above my head just as something struck
the rock beetle with the force of a hammer. For the first time, I heard the rock beetle’s high-pitched shriek of pain. We
plummeted toward the earth, and I clung helplessly to the saddle horn and braced for what was sure to be lethal impact. But
then, at the last moment, Ratuk’s wings buzzed to life, slowing our straight downward plunge. He hit the side of a gully wall,
careened off, and crashed to the earth. Both Raithe and I were thrown from his back, and the iylvahn pulled me to him, protecting
me as we struck the rocky ground and rolled. The impact sent a blaze of agony up my arm, bringing tears to my eyes and a bloom
of nausea to my stomach. We rolled to a painful stop and lay there, stunned.
Ratuk. The ground swayed beneath me as I untangled myself from Raithe and looked around for the rock beetle. He lay on his back
near the canyon wall, legs moving weakly, wings buzzing in sporadic twitches. He didn’t seem able to get up.
With a hiss, the abomination’s head peered over the wall, hollow eye sockets fixing right on me, and then, with the scuttling
of hundreds of legs, it slid into the gully with us. The terrible jaws gaped, mandibles grinding as it loomed overhead, enormous
and completely unkillable.
Raithe pushed himself to his feet. The faintest of smiles flickered across his face, his eyes heavy with regret. “Our curse with giant insects continues,” he said, and turned back to the monster. “Though I think it’s my turn to save us.”
“Raithe . . .”
“Survive, Sparrow,” he whispered, and fearlessly strode toward the monster waiting at the edge of the gully. The abomination
opened its jaws and reared up, silhouetted against the sky. The kahjai didn’t stop walking toward the death that awaited him,
and the monster lunged.
Brilliant light exploded into the canyon.
I winced, shielding my eyes, as the light seared my vision, turning everything gold and white. The abomination hissed and
recoiled, its legs scuttling over the stones, as a star or tiny sun seemed to appear in the air above us. A voice echoed into
the canyon, not loud, but it made every stone, every rock and branch and blade of grass, tremble with power.
“Fateless. You have come.”
The light dimmed, fading away to reveal a figure hovering in the air before the abomination. My eyes watered, my vision still
blurry from the fall and the light, so the features were hard to make out. But whoever it was, they were very tall, with long
white hair flowing behind them in the wind.
The abomination snarled and reared up, legs clicking and mandibles scraping together. Its scythe-like claws came flashing
down, and my stomach clenched—I expected to see the figure cut cleanly in two. But the figure suddenly winked out of existence for a split second and appeared somewhere else in the space of a blink. Its head turned, observing the abomination in a bored, almost annoyed manner.
“Begone.”
There was a pulse of immense power. It rippled through the ground under my feet and shivered through the air, making every
hair on my body stand up. I’d felt that kind of power only once before, in Kovass, as I’d watched my city collapse around
me.
The abomination was already rearing back for another strike, front claws glittering in the sun. Suddenly, the monster went
rigid. Its terrible jaws gaped, going wider and wider, as if two giant hands had grabbed those mandibles and were prying them
open. The rest of its body writhed, legs scraping and clicking madly over the stones, but whatever force had it in its grip
did not relent. The monster let out one high-pitched scream and then exploded, mandibles ripped away, upper half torn asunder
in a spray of yellow goo. The ruined segmented body collapsed onto the gully wall and slid limply to the ground.
My legs shook, and I locked my knees to keep myself upright, as the hovering figure turned from the monster’s limp body and
drifted to the ground. It landed before me, and I gazed up into the face of a beautiful iylvahn woman, dark and elegant, standing
head and shoulders above even Raithe. Her long hair was like the finest silver threads, drifting around her as if it had a
mind of its own. She smiled at me, and it was like a god deciding to be merciful today.
“Greetings, Fateless.” Her voice was a song, soothing and musical, burrowing into my mind. I could feel it coiling around my heart, weaving threads into my soul. “I am Sahmessyia, queen of these lands.” She raised both hands, indicating the Maze around us. “Welcome to my labyrinth.”
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. Obsidian-black eyes gazed down at me, ancient and empty as the Void . . . just like
those of another who had the power to destroy the world.
The queen of the iylvahn was a Deathless.